Creating the Artwork

Experimentation

To begin the creation of the artwork I first need to know how I was going to paint the botanical paintings as this is something I am not greatly familiar with. To begin with I decided to create a painting of a mushroom in my traditional style, done by first drawing a pencil outline, the drawing a pen outline on top, now adding a layer of ink to add tone, then finishing it with a layer of watercolour to add all the colour to the painting. What worked about this is that the shaping and line work go well together and work to create the correct shape and proportions for the mushroom, the texture also works well in the piece. However though it has a lot of issues, mainly how dark it is and how the whole shape has just been lost, this could be improved by dropping the black background and trying lighter colours for it instead, as well as dropping the ink layer to brighten up the mushroom and allow for a simpler lighter mushroom. This is something that will be experimented with as it is imperative to the project for this to work.

Next before trying any more ink or watercolour based experiments I wanted to have a go at oil as this could very well be an avenue since oil lends itself well to botanical work. This piece here was made entirely in wet and wet by continuously adding in the colours. What’s good about this are those colours and how bright they are as they help lift the sprig of the background, which also works well with the given colour pallet. This however also has a lot of issues as the painting is very misshapen and looks completely proptionally wrong, there is also a lack of detail and a very bad use of line all of which comes from how hard it is to remove mistakes and re-configure, though the bad texture, detail, and all that comes from the oil as it just doesn’t work with my style of painting so I cannot use it for the final pieces as there simply isn’t enough time to learn oils properly to create it, leaving it out. 

To come to a decision on what sort of technique and method should be used for the final piece I created five paintings, all depicting the same image only painted in different ways with different coloured backgrounds. In all I created five different paintings, testing: watercolour and pencil (light green), watercolour and ink (cream), pure watercolour (black), pen and watercolour (dark green), and biro watercolour (dark blue). Out of these the best outcome came from the pen out line with watercolour fill (dark green) as it had great radiance in light and saturation, similar to the pure watercolour (black) but with the pen outline to strengthen the image and help structure it. it also has the best texture because of this and kept the highlight and dark areas in a good contrast to each other which is why I choose it for the my technique, it does have one problem though and that is that the berries haven’t got the same radiance to them as some of the others here, this could be fixed by adding pen to the berries to help mark out the dark and light areas to bring that contrast in and fix said problem. There was a runner up though, I was tempted to continue the pen, ink, watercolour combo as here it turned out rather well (cream base) since the ink added this desaturated look to the piece which helps it radiate the Victorian style I am aiming for. It was however o much of a risk after seeing what had happened with previous works so it was left. The pencil watercolours are also worth a mention as they do have a nice quality about them but without the black line they lose structure and can have an odd transition with the gouache in the piece. For the background colour I ended up choosing the cream as it was light and matched well with the colours in the piece to help recreate the aged paper look but in a more even modern way. Overall this was very successful and now I knew exactly what technique and background to use.

Before creating the final piece I needed one more piece of information, the shape and ratio. For this I searched around various online frame sales as well as easy access in store buys and found a very large ratio in sizes with many stores having their own size range to match their prints and though there where some standardized sizes amongst the different stores though they could be confusing due to the multiple version and ratios especially when mounts become involved. This led me to the decision on painting a square image as the ratio on this is incredibly simple and so applicable to many different frames and types as all it needs is to be square. I ended up choosing 8 x 8 inches for both the prints and art works as this was by far the most popular with both mount and non-mount options available making it a simple decision.

Final Piece

These are the three final pieces, for the image choose I looked through some only primary imagery of leaf cuttings and settled on two berries pieces then a flower image as the colours and compositions of those flowers leaded themselves well to the paper size and ratio as well as the colours to the background. For all three pieces the technique was the same, draw out the sample, add the ink pen work for the lines, then use watercolour and glazing to add the colour, texture, and tone to the piece with a finishing of gouache highlights then a gouache background. What turned out well about these painting is the detail as it really helped to achieve the texture and tone I was going for, which are also some of the strongest points of these paintings. The colour itself also turned out very vibrant without the ink base which helps make the work stand out a bit more from its background. The highlight also went really well especially on the flowers leaves and the rosehips. I also got the thickness and waxy texture right on the flower painting which also works really well. The line work also works great to give them structure and help direct the shading to give it all more presence and weight. What could be improved though is a lot, the first being the background I really do not like how the background turned out its way to strongly coloured and creates more of a Spanish still life vibe almost instead of the Victorian rival I was aiming for, if I where to do it again I would either us a very faint cream or use one of the other colours tested earlier. What else didn’t work is the watercolour work on the flower as it just doesn’t have the clarity and see though texture I was aiming for with the flower and the black lines look very heavy which really bring the piece down and make the flower look almost muddy, this is something else I would change by either using much finer lines for the flower then making sure all the left over ink has been taken away as not to disturb the colour, or just simply not use ink but this may leave it looking too light when compared to the rest of the painting. The last thing which I really didn’t like was the whole texture colour situation with the orange berry cutting as the berries look muddy and dull while the leaves just look plain wrong with scratchy textures and bad fades as well as poor colour matches it is by far the weakest of the three and so much could be improved on it if more time and care had been taken to assure that but time is running out as Christmas fast approaches and there is just simply not enough time to fix this issue so it will have to do. But I want to take this and learn from it and make sure next time to get the work done in plenty of time of the sales period as this will allow for changes and re-dos if the work is simply just not good enough. Overall though they are passable enough to use for the work and will continue on into the next stage.